Steven Van Zandt¶
At a glance¶
- Born
- November 22, 1950, Winthrop, MA; raised in New Jersey
- Known as
- Little Steven; Miami Steve
- Day job
- Guitarist, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
- Role
- Silvio Dante, 1999–2007
- Prior acting experience
- None
The audition¶
The best casting story in the series.
Chase saw Van Zandt inducting The Rascals into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 and was struck by the persona — the delivery, the clothes, the total commitment of the bit. He asked him to audition for Tony Soprano.
Van Zandt had never acted in his life.
HBO, reasonably, would not put an untrained musician in the lead of a drama series. Rather than lose him, Chase wrote a new character specifically for him — Silvio Dante, consigliere and manager of the Bada Bing, who does not exist in the original pilot script.
Silvio¶
The performance works because Van Zandt isn't acting so much as inhabiting a very particular register he already owned: the fastidiousness, the deadpan, the hair, the suits, the sense of a man who has thought carefully about his own presentation.
What he adds is stillness. Silvio is the calmest person in every room, which makes him the most frightening — he's the one who kills Adriana, without commentary and without needing to discuss it afterward.
He also does the Godfather Part III impression, on request, for years, always slightly worse. It's the show's neatest joke about itself.
He was never Emmy-nominated.
Music¶
He is credited as a music consultant, and Chase occasionally consulted him — though Chase selected the tracks himself, with music producer Martin Bruestle and editor Kathryn Dayak. See Music.
His own musical career is substantial and independent: the E Street Band since the 1970s, a solo career as Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, and — most consequentially — organizing Artists United Against Apartheid and the 1985 "Sun City" single, which had a measurable effect on the cultural boycott of South Africa.
He also created and hosts the long-running radio show Little Steven's Underground Garage.
After¶
He created and starred in Lilyhammer (2012–14), as a New York mobster relocated to Norway in witness protection — notable as Netflix's first original series, predating House of Cards by a year.
He returned to touring with Springsteen and published a memoir, Unrequited Infatuations, in 2021.